Arman (ARMAND Fernandez) was born in Nice, France in 1929,
When about 20 years old he abandoned his surname and since the mid 1950s when the 'd' was omitted from his name in an exhibition catalogue he has been known simply as Arman. In 1949 he moved to Paris where he studied archeology and oriental art but began painting. He travelled extensively and served in the French Indo-China war. In the early 1950s he became influenced by Serge Poliakoff and Nicholas de Stael, both abstract painters and later met with American artist such as Larry Rivers, Rauschemberg and Jasper Johns. He began making sculptures and exhibited very abstract works in Paris.
In 1957 he gained interest in common objects as works of art. His first works after this point were objects dipped into paint and then pressed into canvases. In doing so, the objects' shadows or impressions were left behind. He called these object impressions, or allures d'objets. Arman then figured that the objects themselves were of some importance, and began to treat them in a special way. He started piling objects in 1959, in view of criticizing art and the consummer society.After meeting Marcel Duchamp in New York in 1 ...